1989 - 1996
The Contemporary
“ In 1989, I founded The Contemporary in order to foster meaningful exchanges between artists, institutions, and diverse audiences. This institution quickly developed a reputation for delivering unexpected, inspiring, and challenging encounters with contemporary art by artists such as Willie Cole, Hung Liu, Alison Saar, and Fred Wilson.
The Contemporary was a nomadic, non-collecting museum in Baltimore whose mission expanded the idea of a museum as an incubator commissioning site-specific and subject-oriented exhibitions. It engaged diverse audiences and advanced contemporary art through interdisciplinary projects and educational programming.
Our work was inspired by three guiding principles: artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere.”
Interview with Irene Hofmann
Becoming The Contemporary
As the director, curator, and steward of The Contemporary for nearly five years, it was my great honor to conduct this interview, although in truth, there wasn't much work for me to do but listen. George and Lisa needed little prompting--it was as if they had waited two decades to share their story in this way. There was a powerful realization of the boldness of their work together, the magic of their partnership, and the legacy that we all shared.
Irene Hofmann, Executive Director (2006-2010)
1996
Ignisfatuus: An Installation by Paul Etienne Lincoln
1996
Going for Baroque
A site-specific work by British artist Paul Etienne Lincoln of intricate glass organs and mechanisms that “bloomed” with the lunar cycle, synchronized with the operatic recordings of Baltimore diva Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981); installed in the 1880 Conservatory at Druid Hill Park; collaboration with six partners; Catalog
March 30–June 2, 1996
Curator: George Ciscle, Director, The Contemporary
Site: Howard P. Rawlings Conservatory at Druid Hill Park, Baltimore
In 1996, The Contemporary hosted a six-month artist residency and an exhibition of site-specific works by Paul Etienne Lincoln, a London-born artist known for his elaborate and meticulously crafted kinetic machines based on extensive research into specific historic events and figures. Lincoln’s project for The Contemporary was conceived as a meditation on the connections between man and nature, animal and plant life, as symbolized by the constant flow of water within them and set to the musical backdrop of recordings by Baltimore’s resident diva Rosa Ponselle. Presented amidst the fauna of the Druid Hill Conservatory, a functional Victorian greenhouse built in 1887 and situated on the grounds of one of America largest planned urban parks, the mechanical components of Ignisfatuus, calibrated precisely to the lunar cycle, slowly pumped luminescent water into delicate resin casts of human organs. Suffused with the smell of violets and distant recordings of Ponselle’s voice, Lincoln’s mechanical “blooming,” which only took place during a full moon, occurred three times over the course of the exhibition.
Collaboration with and at the Walters Art Museum, juxtaposing works by 18 contemporary artists fascinated by the art and culture of the 17th and 18th centuries with related works from the museum; Catalog
September 24,1995 – February 4,1996
Participating Artists: Ken Aptekar, Dotty Attie, Karl Connolly, Ann Fessler, Bryan Hunt, Derek Jarman, Jeff Koons, Paul Etienne Lincoln, Jean Lowe, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Yasumasa Morimura, Juan Muñoz, Rosamond Purcell, David Reed, Adrian Saxe, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Frank Stella
Curators: Lisa Corrin, Curator, The Contemporary in cooperation with Joaneath Spicer, Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art, Walters Art Museum
Organization: Presented in collaboration with the Walters Art Museum
Site: The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
Juxtaposing contemporary artworks with paintings and sculptures from the Walters Art Museum’s distinguished collection of Baroque art, Going for Baroque featured the work of eighteen international artists who share a fascination with the Baroque period’s penchant for theatrical drama and illusion. Bringing contemporary art into the Walters Art Museum for the first time, the exhibition curators established a provocative visual dialogue between past and present. Not unlike The Contemporary’s 1992 landmark exhibition Mining the Museum, Going for Baroque demonstrated the museum’s continued ability to engage audiences through unique collaborations with distinguished Baltimore cultural institutions. In addition to the exhibition itself, the partnering museums sponsored a series of month-long artist residencies during which Dotty Attie, Karl Connolly, and David Reed created new works in response to the Walters’ collection.
“Going for Baroque is as ambitious, layered, and provocative as the best of the artworks it puts on view. It manages to invest older works with new significance and to frame new work so as to enlarge its meaning. Somehow it is a great deal of fun, though its themes are often troubling. This perhaps, is the best role that any museum can seek to fulfill—to keep past art alive while embracing a complex and ever-changing present.” Dorothy Valakos, “Forward into the Past,” City Paper
1995
Can-ton: The Baltimore Series New Paintings by Hung Liu
Artist’s quest to understand the city’s historical connections to China; at the Canton National Bank; satellite exhibition at the Peale Museum
March 19–May 28, 1995
Curator: Lisa Corrin, Curator, The Contemporary
Site: The former Canton National Bank, Baltimore
For her solo exhibition at The Contemporary, classically trained Chinese muralist Hung Liu combined “identity fragments” from a “cultural collision” between East and West to produce a series of shaped paintings that unite historic and contemporary photographic images of China with “exotic” Western stereotypes of the Orient. Reflecting layers of history buried in Canton, a Baltimore neighborhood founded in 1785 by a wealthy Western exporter of goods from Canton, China, the exhibition’s title evokes cultural exchange by also referring directly to the area’s industrial moniker “Can-town.” Such exchange played out visually on the artists’ canvases, which were temporarily installed in a vacant bank building at Elliott and Clinton Streets in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood.
1995
Labor of Love: Exhibition by Willie Cole
Artist compared history of industry with the contemporary issue of the birth industry (contraception, fertility and delivery); collaboration with and at the Baltimore Museum of Industry
October 2, 1994 – January 1, 1995
Curators: Lisa Corrin, Curator, The Contemporary
Organization: Presented in collaboration with the Baltimore Museum of Industry
Site: Baltimore Museum of Industry, Baltimore
Exploring Baltimore’s history as a center of industry and biotechnological research, Willie Cole’s The Contemporary exhibition took shape in the galleries of the Baltimore Museum of Industry over the course of three-months. Drawing parallels between the history of human industrial labor and the labor of childbirth, Labor of Love centered on an ongoing baking project, during which Cole produced and baked countless loaves of bread in the shape of human infants.
“[Labor of Love] metaphorically explores the impact of the ‘birth industry,’ the various technologies connected with human birth—contraception, fertility, delivery, and infant care—and how individuals and communities make decisions as a consequence of these technologies. It also raises questions about the role of parents and the community in the physical, intellectual, and moral nurturing of a child.” Lisa G. Corrin, exhibition brochure.
1994
Contemporary East European Ceramics
70 artists from 15 former Eastern Bloc countries at historic St. Stanislaus Convent; collaboration with MICA and Baltimore Clayworks; Catalog
October 24–December 12, 1993
Participating Artists: 73 artists from Armenia, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine
Project Director: George Ciscle, Director, The Contemporary
Organization: A traveling exhibition curated by Jimmy Clarke, Executive Director of the Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA, and presented in conjunction with Baltimore Clayworks and the Maryland Institute College of Art
Site: St. Stanislaus Kostka Convent, 724 South Ann Street, Baltimore
Featuring over 70 artists from fifteen former Eastern Bloc countries, Contemporary East European Ceramics was the first comprehensive survey exhibition of Eastern European clay art in America. This wide-ranging exhibition, installed temporarily in a Fells Point neighborhood convent, showcased over 170 individual works representing the sheer breadth and range of Eastern European ceramic arts since the mid-1980s. The social and political upheavals specific to the region’s historical moment served as an undeniable backdrop to the wide range of styles and forms on display. “The inescapable common denominator,” explained curator Jimmy Clark, “was the Socialist State, at one and the same time the artist's benefactor and nemesis." Beset with a scarcity of raw materials and kilns, these artists invented a new range of possibilities for clay art, experimenting with firings, altering industrial materials, and sometimes working with found objects on a scale unusual for ceramic arts. Drawing over 3,500 visitors and 50 school and community groups to The Contemporary’s temporary venue, this unique exhibition also involved in a residency program for two artists—Czeslaw Podlesny (Poland) and Jindra Vikova (Czech Republic)—who created new work in an on-site studio at the exhibition venue and in MICA’s ceramics studios.
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In late 1991, the doors of St. Stanislaus Convent closed when the last four nuns moved a half-mile away to Holy Rosary Convent. Since 1926, the twenty-three bedroom building with its large parlors, refectory, bishop’s dining room, and chapel had been home to the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph, many of whom taught in the parish school. Just across the parking lot is the ornately decorated St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, founded in 1880 as the mother church of Baltimore’s Polish community, which had been burgeoning since 1868 in the eastern part of the city from Locust Point to Highlandtown. Leaving many of the building’s original furnishings in place, Ciscle installed the show while also preserving the historical context of the venue.
“It’s not just objects isolated in a gallery,” Ciscle told the Baltimore Sun. “It makes for a more special experience to see them like this.” Additionally, the Contemporary’s installation allowed for the upper floors of the building to be opened to the public for the first time in the building’s history.” Ed Gunts, “Vacant Convent to House Exhibit,” Sunpapers
1994
Home and the World: Architectural Sculptures by Aboudramane and Bodys Kingelez
Three-part exhibition centered around South African artists’ works positioned in relationship to works of two Maryland communities and the African collection of the James E. Lewis Museum; collaboration with and at Morgan State University; Catalog
March 6–May 1, 1994
Organization: Curated by Susan Vogel, Executive Director of the Museum for African Art, New York. Presented in collaboration with the James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Morgan State University
Site: Murphy Fine Arts Center, Morgan State University, Baltimore
Presenting architectural sculpture by two contemporary African artists, Home and the World considered the relationship between Africa’s built environment and the continent’s changing cultural identity with the work of Aboudramane (Côte d‘Ivoire) and Bodys Kingelez (Zaire). Each artists’ composite sculptures—Kingelez’ “maquettes extremes” and Aboudramane’s “memory sculptures”—employed domestic architectural forms that evoked Africa’s past and present, inviting visitors to consider a constellation of indigenous, colonial, global, and imaginary references.
1993
Catfish Dreamin’: An Installation on Wheels by Alison Saar
An exploration of the diverse cultural functions of a single symbol, traveling on a vintage pickup truck for seven months to 80 partner sites in four states, with interactive audience programs conducted by driver/art educator and local docents
April 24 – October 5, 1993
Curator: George Ciscle, Director, The Contemporary
Drawing on the Baltimore tradition of African-American vendors known as Arabers who sell fruit and vegetables from horse-drawn carts, artist Alison Saar created a mobile installation mounted on the back of a 1959 Chevy pick-up truck. Designed to transport her exhibition and its related educational programs to urban and rural communities across the mid-Atlantic region, Saar’s vehicle was outfitted with a corrugated tin roof and a giant catfish sculpture in the back.
Extending the artist’s interests in ethnic diaspora, cultural diversity, oral traditions, and folk arts, Catfish Dreamin’ created a forum for individuals to connect with one another using the shared cultural traditions of region. With the assistance of driver/educators and local docents, Saar’s truck visited community centers, libraries, senior centers, parks, malls, and schools in over eighty neighborhoods across three states and the District of Columbia. At each stop, stories were collected and shared using the catfish as a collective repository for individuals’ narratives, dreams, and memories. Catfish Dreamin’ participants were invited to reach into the mouth of Saar’s giant catfish sculpture and select a smooth river stone stamped with the word “dream.” The stones were then wrapped in copies of the exhibition brochure, known as The Catfish Crier, and given to participants as souvenirs.
Community sites in Baltimore for Catfish Dreamin’ included: Deep Creek Middle School; Discovery Day Camp; Hatton Senior Center; The League (for the Handicapped); Oriole Park at Camden Yards; Sandtown-Winchester; Village of Cross Keys; Waverly Farmer’s Market; Woodbourne Center.
Regional hosts for Catfish Dreamin’ included: Academy for the Arts, Easton, MD; Carroll County Arts Council, MD; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE; Dorchester County Arts Council, MD; Frederick Community College, Frederick, MD; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.; Howard County Arts Council, MD; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY; Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C.
1992-1993
Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson
Collaboration with and at the Maryland Historical Society. Artist investigated the African American and Native American experiences in Maryland using objects from the museum’s collection; American Association of Museums Exhibition of the Year; Catalog
April 3, 1992 – February 28,1993
Curators: Lisa Corrin, Assistant Director, The Contemporary , and Jennifer Goldsborough, Maryland Historical Society
Organization: Presented in collaboration with the Maryland Historical Society
Site: Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore
In a unique partnership, the Contemporary and the Maryland Historical Society sponsored a two-month residency for installation artist Fred Wilson, known at the time for creating mock museums consisting of reproductions of ethnographical artifacts. In this, his first project within a museum, Wilson’s working method at the Historical Society was, in effect, to “mine” the institution’s archives, permanent collection, and storage areas, and to present an exhibition of his own devising. In keeping with the Historical Society’s style of exhibition design, Wilson created an installation of the museum’s collection objects that recontextualized over 100 historical artifacts. Through striking juxtapositions, which included slave shackles encased with fine silver, a Ku Klux Klan hood in a baby carriage, and Victorian chairs placed around a whipping post, Wilson’s provocative installation raised urgent questions about the Society’s historical representation of African-American and Native-American experiences. Unearthing repressed meanings and untold narratives from Maryland’s visual past, Mining the Museum revealed how the documenting of history and the curating of artifacts could be understood as powerful acts of selection, exclusion, and interpretation, each requiring renewed self-awareness.
Arguably the most successful exhibition in The Contemporary’s history, Mining the Museum ran for eleven months, well beyond its original two-month schedule, due to its overwhelming success in the community as well as its national critical acclaim. For its bold installation that forged new paths for historical interpretation and museum display, Mining the Museum was named “Exhibition of the Year” in 1993 by the American Association of Museums; the exhibition catalogue was awarded the George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award for outstanding scholarship and publication design.
“Before I visited the Maryland Historical Society, I had no idea, no preconceived notions on what I was going to do. I went with no script—nothing whatsoever planned in my head. I didn’t know the exhibition was going to be about African-American history. I was intrigued right away by the fact that I felt so alien in this environment—the irony being the collections reflect American history and were very familiar. To understand my feelings, I tried to get to know the museum, the collections, the community it served, its structure, how it worked, and the people who worked there from the maintenance staff to the executive director. Going through the storage rooms was as important as understanding what was on view. I let the objects and paintings speak to me, let them tell me their story. These voices became a chorus, and the exhibition revealed itself to me.” Fred Wilson
“Mining the Museum is a work of art which involves the visitor in new ways of seeing and thinking about history. Although it relies on carefully researched, historically accurate facts, it encourages questions instead of providing all the answers.” Jennifer Goldsborough, Chief Curator, Maryland Historical Society
Exhibit Catalog Foreword
Lisa Corrin Essay
How Mining the Museum Changed the Art World BmoreArt, Kerr Houston, May 3, 2017
Celebrating 25th anniversary of Mining the Museum Vimeo MICA, March, 2016
1991
Soul Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths
Dawn Dedeaux’s multi-media installation paired with works from workshops conducted by six Maryland artists-in-residence at the Woodbourne Center, a multi-service treatment facility for children and their families
January 26 – February 23, 1992
Participating Artists: Dawn Dedeaux and the Woodbourne Workshop artists including Kibibi and Kauna Ajanku, Ardai Baharmast, Angela Franklin, Katherine Kendall, Sherwin Mark
Curator: Lisa Corrin, Assistant Director, The Contemporary
Site: University of Baltimore Biddle Street Garage at 1111 Cathedral Street, Baltimore
In 1992, The Contemporary commissioned New Orleans-based multi-media artist Dawn Dedeaux to create a large-scale video installation in a parking garage on the University of Baltimore campus in the city’s Mount Vernon neighborhood. Exploring the impact of urban violence on youth, cities, and institutions, Dedeaux’s installation grew out of an eighteen-month arts workshop program in the New Orleans juvenile detention system. The installation site, a former Buick dealership, housed an exhibition of artworks created by local artists in collaboration with children from the Woodbourne Center, a local treatment and educational facility serving at-risk youth.
“It is of the utmost importance to bridge the gaps of understanding that lie between our youth and our communities. We see expressive artistic training as the perfect way to unlock the impassable doors created by inner city life.”
Woodbourne Workshop Artists Kibibi and Kauna Ajanku
1991
Photo Manifesto: Contemporary Photography in the USSR
Explored culture of Soviet Union and the changing identity of the country and its people through 240 photographs by 45 “unofficial” artists; in the appropriately “unofficial” former Greyhound Bus Garage; Catalog
May 19 – June 21, 1991
Participating Artists: 43 artists from the former Soviet Union
Curators: George Ciscle, Director, The Contemporary, and Joseph Walker, Christopher Ursitti & Paul McGinniss
Site: The former Greyhound Service Terminal, located on Centre Street at Park Avenue, Baltimore
The Contemporary ’s first exhibition of international art, Photo Manifesto, presented 240 recent photographic works by 43 artists from the former Soviet Union. All of the featured works had been created since the late 1980s and most had never before been seen outside of the USSR. The vacated Greyhound Bus Service Terminal in downtown Baltimore provided an appropriate exhibition context, echoing the “raw” spaces of abandoned Soviet warehouses and industrial sites that functioned as exhibition spaces for “unofficial” art in the more tolerant climate of the Gorbachev era. Arguing for the importance of creative expression in the formation of a more open society, Photo Manifesto also featured panel discussions, gallery talks, educational programs, film screenings, and an on-site reading room.
About the Site: Located in downtown Baltimore, the former Greyhound Service Terminal was built in 1941, during the heyday of the bus transportation industry. With its slick, polished surfaces and metallic trims, the vast and continuous garage space is an example of the art moderne (or “streamlined”) design style popular at that time. Using temporary, corrugated aluminum partitions to exhibit the photographic works in Photo Manifesto, The Contemporary activated a disused urban space, which had remained vacant since 1976.
“A visit to this museum is somewhat like looking at art inside a gas station service bay, only bigger…. The high ceilings, intricate roof trusses and abundance of diffused light coming through the skylights make for an ideal exhibition space, and the great continuous bays lend themselves to a variety of spatial configurations. The space is also curiously timeless—very much 1940s wartime airplane hangar, with a raw, almost ominous edge to it, and yet somehow very 1990s Baltimore, too, a little tawdry but rich in atmosphere and full of promise.”
Ed Gunts, “Parking Art in a Garage,” Sunpapers
1990
Visual AIDS
Over 200 works by artists from 35 states and three countries exhibited with audience responses in Baltimore’s legendary abandoned nightclub, The Famous Ballroom; collaboration with city-wide health care providers who were recipients of artists’ work in their offices, homes and hospices afterwards
December 1 – 22,1990
Participating Artists: Over 200 regional and national artists submitted work by mail
Curators: George Ciscle, Director, and Lisa Corrin, Assistant Director, The Contemporary
Organization: Presented in conjunction with the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore
Site: The former Famous Ballroom building at 1717 North Charles Street, Baltimore
In a follow-up to Outcry, The Contemporary organized Visual AIDS, joining thousands of arts organizations nationwide in “A Day Without Art,” a day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis organized by the New York-based group Visual AIDS. Borrowing the group’s name for an exhibition, George Ciscle and Lisa Corrin issued an open call for artworks that address HIV/AIDS to be mailed in to the newly formed “museum without walls.” Welcoming art in any medium, Ciscle and Corrin committed to a bold, “uncurated” exhibition model that would incorporate many perspectives and stimulate public dialogue. Featuring over 200 works, Ciscle and Corrin conceived Visual AIDS to grow through additional contributions from exhibition visitors and local school children. At the exhibition’s conclusion, The Contemporary donated all submitted artworks to hospitals, AIDS hospices, individuals afflicted with the disease, community centers, and AIDS-related research organizations.
About the Site: Establishing itself as a “museum without walls,” The Contemporary staged Visual AIDS in the vacant “Famous Ballroom” dance hall on Charles Street in the Station North neighborhood. For nearly twenty years, “The Famous” served as a venue for the Left Bank Jazz Society where jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane and others performed. With help from a team of volunteers from the Maryland Institute College of Art and Baltimore-based architect Steve Ziger, Ciscle and Corrin transformed the raw space into the Contemporary’s first venue.
1989-1990
OUTCRY: Artists Answer AIDS
Twelve artists commissioned for ArtScape exhibition, Baltimore. Toured to Arlington Arts Center, VA; Goucher College, Baltimore; Catalog
July 12 – August 5, 1990
Participating Artists: Virginia Brown, Donald Cook, Nicholas Corrin, Ann Fessler, Jeff Gates, Mia Halton, Michael Iampieri, Chevelle Makeba Moore Jones, Ruth Eve Pettus, Stephen John Phillips, Josef Schützenhöfer, Joyce J. Scott
Curator: George Ciscle, Director, The Contemporary
Organization: Presented in conjunction with Artscape ’90, with support from the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Art and Culture, Baltimore
Site: Fox Building, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore
Exhibition Tour: Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA; Mosely Gallery, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Princess Anne, MD; Rosenberg Gallery, Goucher College, Baltimore, MD; Stephanie Ann Roper Gallery, Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD
In 1990, The Contemporary ’s founding director, George Ciscle created the museum’s first official project when he invited twelve regional artists to create works addressing the AIDS crisis. Responding with sculpture, photography, painting, and mixed media, the participating artists issued a collective outcry for healing and action in order to expand public dialogue, awareness, and compassion.
“Each of the artists in Outcry seeks to encourage a more self-reflective and even self-critical response to AIDS. Perhaps their most important contribution to the dialogue about AIDS is ambiguity: taking what we might choose to see in black and white terms and subjecting our thinking to the confusion of color and shading.” Patrick Finnegan, “Twelve Voices, Twelve New Questions,” catalog essay.
Acknowledgement: Exhibition texts adapted from “20 Years : The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore since 1989”
Editor: Irene Hoffman with Pamela Berman , 2011
The Contemporary’s Archives at MICA Decker Library will be available Fall 2022.